In my presentation Les salutations which you can download here and play around with yourself, you can see that I've decided to move the speech bubbles and not the stickmen so the eye concentrates on the language rather than the people. The important thing is to set up the first slide as you want it and then make little movements in subsequent slides.

Making the characters was easier. I used the Oval and Line tool from the Drawing Menu (View/Toolbars/Drawing) and then inserted speech bubbles or 'Callouts' by going to Autoshapes on the same toolbar, hovering over Callouts and selecting one from the menu. This makes the cursor turn into a cross which you drag across the slide to form the Callout. To add text, right click on the edge of the Callout and select Edit Text. Use the Fill Color tool on the Drawing toolbar to change the background colour of your Callout. The same technique can be used to change the colour of your stickman's head too. If you think your stickmen are looking a bit thin, you need to select each element of the drawing and change the line thickness by using the Line Styles tool.

Once I was happy with the presentation, I saved the eleven slides as individual pictures (File/Save As/Save as type/JPEG File Interchange Format). I then imported them into the Slidestory publisher which you can download for free here. With my 'plug and play' mike, I recorded some audio and then uploaded the finished show to the Slidestory site. From there, I cut and pasted the html code needed to play the presentation on my blog (see above).

Creating animations with stickmen and speech bubbles in this way is fairly straightforward and could be useful in the classroom. The process could help to engage pupils in all four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing while they are practising their dialogue work. Admittedly, narration can be recorded straight into PowerPoint, but by using Slidestory the presentations can be published to a blog or website and then be watched at school as well as at home. Why not have a go and see how you get on yourself. You may be drawn in.

"Before, I would just play a CD in front of the whole class and there would be some students whose eyes would glaze over after the first couple of seconds and some who would get this intense look of fear on their faces. With the iPods, each student can listen at their own pace and they have the control to pause or replay certain parts… I find that the slower students have more confidence.”

Margaret Soltan, English professor at Duke University mentions the conveniency of using iPods in her post iPod, RIP, iPod Experiment. She describes how Lisa Merschel finds that iPods allow for 'expanded course content', quoting her saying:

"students can download their audio listening exercises to the iPod and do their homework anywhere instead of relying on language lab hours"

Margaret goes on to outline some of the difficulties experienced by the Languages faculty during the project, namely:

using technology with large classes

students forgetting to bring or charge their iPods

students primarily using their iPods for recreational, rather than educational purposes

She quotes Aaron Markham, one of Lisa Merschel's students who gives an honest and balanced view of the program. On the one hand, he says that "The iPod facilitates learning and makes it a better overall experience,". However, he adds that "the iPod experiment did not pan out how the administration hoped,".

Students Keith Rand and Lissa Smith are more positive. Keith says using an iPod allows him to work at his own pace and target the sections he finds particularly challenging. Lissa enjoys being able to review pronunciation whilst on the move. She says:

“It’s especially nice for me because I often work and travel for my work,” she says, “and when there are places I can’t access a computer this is really great for me.”

The iPod program has admittedly been a costly experiment, but has nonetheless provided useful insights on how technology can respond to individual needs and learning preferences. For the latest developments and future plans of the project, have a look at the Webcast Archive from The Duke University. Don't forget you'll need Quicktime installed on your computer to view the clips.

27/08/2006

Organisers of The Language Show 2006 have announced the session programme for this year's event. Based in Olympia, London, the three day exhibition runs from 3-5 November 2006. All sessions are free, but delegates are advised to book to guarantee a place. Full details of the sessions can be found in the Teacher's Zone on the official Language Show website.

The ICT-related talks this year include:

Friday 11.45 - 12.30 Blogs, podcasts, wikis, photosharing…engage your students in MFL. Following the huge popularity of his talk last year, Ewan McIntosh, New Technologies Research Practitioner Learning and Teaching Scotland is back with the most up-to-date and exciting tools to engage MFL students: he will demonstrate how to make best use of blogs, podcasts, wikis, photosharing, Google Earth, online book marking and massive multi-user online games to further learning and development and to run international or classroom-based collaborative projects.

Friday 18.00 - 18.45A quick start guide for French teachers with www.TV5.org . Supporting the French TV channel the TV5MONDE website is vast, and the teachers section www.tv5.org/enseignants, packed full of free online resources. This seminar aims to give a quick-start guide on how to best use TV5 in the classroom, a review of programmes on TV5MONDE and a tour of the website.

Saturday 10.30 - 11.15Death by PowerPoint? Keep your finger on the trigger.Joe Dale, French coordinator at Nodehill Middle School on the Isle of Wight and one of the most popular speakers from last year will show how MS PowerPoint can greatly improve MFL teaching in the classroom. Triggers, Custom Animations, Action Buttons, colour coding and keyboard shortcuts will be demonstrated as part of a variety of practical examples for presenting vocabulary and playing games.

Saturday 15.30 - 16.15Teaching French with ‘real’, authentic resources . TV adverts, films, songs, comic strips and even poetry are just some of the cultural and ‘real’ resources that make languages relevant to learners. Stephane Derone from Linguascope will give this stimulating session looking at simple, accessible ways of approaching and exploiting these authentic resources with focus on French - even with beginners.

Sunday 13.00 - 13.45A walk through ICTLAND.Helen Myers , MFL teacher at The Ashcombe School, Dorking and SSAT Lead Practitioner gives an independent overview of time-saving language software products for every-day teaching currently available on the mark et, many of which will be in the exhibition. Ideas for all whether you already have ICT skills or are a beginner. Relevant for the teaching of any age group, but examples will be provided from the primary and secondary fields. For details of the school's free workshops visit www.ashcombe.surrey.sch.uk

Sunday 14.15 - 15.00Primary MFL with the aid of Interactive Whiteboards. Suzanne Taylor (From all Around the World/Edpax) will demonstrate how Interactive Whiteboards can be used to facilitate primary students’ learning. Practical and exciting examples of how to deliver French, German and Spanish will be offered.

24/08/2006

Bienvenue and Hallo are the first in a series of podcasts created by MFL teacher Adam Sutcliffe from The Gordon Schools in Huntly, Aberdeenshire. The vocabulary guides are designed to help S1 (Yr7) pupils with their French and German homework. Available on the TGS MFL Homework blog, the vocabulary guides start with advice in English on how they can be used effectively.

e.g

as a pronunciation model for words and phrases already in their vocabulary books

as a way of revising vocabulary by writing down meanings in the pauses between items

for pronunciation practice by recognising and reproducing the sounds of words accurately

as a subliminal learning tool (with reference to the Simpson's episode Bart's Friend Falls in Love, where Homer accidentally gets a set of subliminal vocabulary building tapes and begins using words no one can understand).

The remainder of the recordings are in the language being studied and cover such topics as:

greetings

saying your name

classroom objects

classroom instructions

the alphabet and spelling

numbers 1-31

months and seasons of the year

saying your age

saying when your birthday is

days of the week

colours

Pupils can download the podcasts and listen to them on a home PC or mp3 player. This will allow them to both listen in their own time and for as many times as they want. It also means they can recap material they cover in class or catch up if they are absent. Pupils are encouraged to leave comments on the blog or speak to their subject teacher about how the podcasts are helping their learning. This should prove interesting reading.

22/08/2006

Lynne Horn - Principal Teacher of the Language Faculty in Tobermory High School, Isle of Mull has kicked off the new academic year by asking her S5/6 (Yr11/12) vocational language students to blog about their experiences of learning Italian from scratch. To coordinate the individual blogs, Lynne has set up a mother blog, a term used by Barbara Ganley recently at the blog.ac.uk 2006 conference and described in Ewan McIntosh's post How to effect change in teaching and learning.

The language students Geri, Lauren and Kate are setting themselves individual weekly targets to help them achieve each phase of the course. To begin with these include:

to say hello

to say their name

to say their age

to ask how someone else is

By using technology, Lynne is enabling her students to study a language they find stimulating, yet may otherwise not have the opportunity to learn.

To celebrate the European Day of Languages on 26th September 2006, there are plans to interview a range of native speakers on how they learn languages, the results of which will be posted on the Tobermory High School website.

It will be interesting to track how the students get on over the next few weeks. I'm sure they'll be able to match the recent successes of the Italian World Cup team and achieve their desired outcomes. Keep checking the mother blog to find out how they are getting on.

Woodhill Primary School, Bishopbriggs, Glasgow in conjunction with Learning and Teaching Scotland launched a weblogging and podcasting project in October 2005. The aim of the project was to support the learning of French in two P6 (Yr6) classes. The school started the project by setting up a blog designed to keep a diary of ongoing developments. For the first few months, the French teacher, Jennifer Derrick published posts about the current topic the pupils were studying along with supplementary worksheets and podcasts she made with her teaching assistant, Fiona Cunningham. Thanks to the blog, pupils were able to download the supporting material at home as well as at school. This meant that they could listen to the podcasts on their personal mp3 players or through iTunes and assess their understanding of the given topics with help from their parents if necessary.

The second phase of the project involved pupils publishing blog posts themselves in which they described their learning experiences. These posts were further supported with encouraging comments from teachers and parents alike. It is clear from reading the posts that the pupils greatly enjoyed their French lessons and using technology to enhance their learning.

One pupils writes:

'In French it is fun using the iPods. We get to listen to the French from the computer and do worksheets.This is more fun than doing work in class. French is my best thing at school.'

Susan Buchanan, Principal Teacher at Woodhill Primary School, Fiona Cunningham and Fiona Andrew, from LT Scotland will be describing the project at the Scottish Learning Festival SETT 2006 on 21st September. The title of their session is To Blog Or Not To blog?

It seems to me that this project provides convincing evidence on the value of blogging and podcasting for engaging pupils and making language learning a very positive experience. Comments welcome as always.

21/08/2006

Xbox Live & MFL is a post on Steve Beard's Thunder blog which proposes the language learning benefits of playing Xbox Live games with gamers from different countries. Competitive games like bingo, battleships, noughts and crosses and blockbusters are fun ways to give a purpose to practising language in the classroom.

Playing over the internet is different though. It offers new possibilities for making virtual connections through social networking and collaborative learning. Using an Xbox Live to create opportunities for real communication to take place is a motivating thought.

Some may think it is just a gimmick, but this example seems proof of the potential of the web to enable language learners to interact with each other meaningfully. Now we need to explore this potential further.

20/08/2006

langwitches.org - 'The magic of language learning through technology' is an excellent website about integrating technology in the foreign language and English language learner classroom. Run by Silvia Tolisano, a Spanish teacher from Florida, USA the site includes:

In an interview with Beth Kanter an independent educational consultant on Beth's Blog, Silvia describes why she set up her site and offers advice to others thinking of joining the edublogosphere. On her site, Silvia states her goal is:

'to encourage foreign language and ESL teachers to learn and experiment with technology and at the same time, become comfortable enough to expand their teaching methodology to include different kinds of technologies into their classrooms'.

It was on langwitches.org that I found out about a potentially very useful voicemail service called K7.net. It allows you to record a voice message by telephoning a specific number which can then be sent to your email address as a wav file. The first langwitches podcast has examples of voicemails that have been sent by language teachers from all over the States. Silvia has then edited them together using Audacity and uploaded the finished file as an mp3 to her site. One particularly good idea offered by a teacher is a song about être verbs in the passé compose. Worth a listen.

This service could be very useful for MFL teachers for the following reasons:

exchanging ideas between colleagues

linking with a partner school as part of an e-Twinning project

setting speaking homework

making podcasts

creating a trip diary

Silvia has kindly left a voice message on my blog for you to haven a listen. I’ve used the brilliant dew player to play the file which is on the left of the blog under Voice Messages. The telephone number is 0012063506411. This is a Seattle number. To telephone from the UK using British Telecom it costs 1.25p per minute according to their website. Feel free to try out the service. My plan is to upload future voicemails as they come in.

16/08/2006

Meet-in School is a videoconferencing project which was launched by the Digital Curriculum Team at Kent County Council in January 2006. The scheme has been designed to enable schools to form creative partnerships by loaning out expensive equipment on a half termly basis. In March 2006, staff from four rural primary schools near Ashford decided to explore the possibility of delivering a French lesson using the videoconferencing technology. The schools involved were:

The first experiment was lead by an enthusiastic French Canadian teacher from Pluckley and proved a great success despite a few initial technical problems. A report which appeared in the Summer edition of the Extranet magazine subtitled ‘Shaping the future of learning in Kent’ described the event as a ‘great success’

“The children had a very interactive time – learning new songs and basic French conversation … What this project has proved is that videoconferencing can effectively facilitate the sharing of good practice expertise in rural schools with virtual lessons, master classes, booster groups and gifted and talented activities.”

A regional BBC crew even came down to film the event which was then broadcast as part of that evening's news report.

Becky Chapman, Kent Digital curriculum officer has set up a Meet-in School blog to support and document the variety of different videoconferencing projects which have taken place so far across the county. For more information about the project, contact Becky on Rebecca.Chapman@kent.gov.uk